The Neuroscience of Visual Hallucinations

Collerton, D; Mosimann, UP; Perry, E

doi:10.1002/9781118892794

The Neuroscience of Visual Hallucinations

Lookup NU author(s): Daniel Collerton, Dr Urs Mosimann, Emeritus Professor Elaine Perry

Downloads

Full text is not currently available for this publication.

Abstract

© 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved. Interest in hallucinations is not new. From Brierre de Boismont's Des hallucinations (1845) onwards, each generation of clinicians produced a landmark book to mark its status: Parish's über die Trugwahrnehmung (1894) at the end of nineteenth century; in the 1930s Quercy's L'Hallucination (1930) and Morgue's Neurobiologie de l'hallucination (1932); in the 1960s West Hallucinations (1962), Klüver's Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations (1966) and Ey's Traité des Hallucinations (1973). Contributors to this book have authored several contemporary works. What each generation has shared is the tradition of treating all hallucinations as a single class of symptom. Nineteenth-century works were not concerned with the distinction between voices, visions and smells, but instead focused on the wider context in which hallucinations occurred: 'opium', 'hashish', 'maladies fèbrile' and 'folie', for example. Twentieth-century works included separate sections for different modalities in an attempt to impose order on what had become a vast literature but without the implication that they should be considered distinct. Thus, until now there has never been a book on visual hallucinations alone. What has changed? Why has this book appeared now and what does it signify.